


Countdown

by greenglowsgold



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M, Self-Destructive Behavior, Suicidal Thoughts, situations similar to and references to termimal illness, very brief sexual references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-07
Updated: 2014-05-07
Packaged: 2018-01-23 22:50:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1582271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenglowsgold/pseuds/greenglowsgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ever since Noah can remember, he’s always known exactly when he’s going to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Countdown

**Author's Note:**

> I was supposed to study for finals today, I DON’T KNOW WHAT HAPPENED. Not beta read, I just wrote this in a weird burst and now I’m posting okay here it is.

Noah used to have a cat, that died when he was seven, forcing his mother to stumble through the ‘everything dies eventually’ speech while his dad (actually around that day) heaped dirt over a shoebox in the backyard. In Noah’s opinion, she did a shit job of it, but that hardly mattered. He already knew about the whole inevitability thing, though it’d be a few more years before he knew all the vocabulary words like that; already understood that life on Earth came with a time limit, sometimes shorter than others. He also knew his own limit, down to the damn minute.

Ever since Noah can remember, he’s always known exactly when he’s going to die.

(Three days after he turns twenty.)

When he’s young, he doesn’t mind it so much. Twenty seems an _awfully_ far way off to a six-year-old, to an eight-year-old, and even at ten he’s still in the ones-decade, and he’ll have to go up a whole other number in the tens place before it’s a problem. It’s when he’s twelve that it really sinks in, that he’s lived more than half of his life already and he still hasn’t even gotten to drive a car or kiss a girl. So he begs his mom until she lets him try out the first — just down the driveway and back up, but it’s still pretty cool — and finds Nancy Greig at school the next day to take care of the second, and he starts living his life a little differently.

Death is more of a concrete concept, now. His granddad died a couple months ago, and Noah stared at the body, dressed up all nice in the casket, until his mom started thinking something was wrong and dragged him away to tell him it was okay to be sad. He was, but not too much, because Granddad was old and liked weird things and ruffled Noah’s hair too hard, and mostly Noah was wondering what they would dress him up in when he died, because he didn’t have a suit. Maybe he would, by the time he was twenty. It turns out death means people stare at you a lot, then, so he hopes they make him look good.

He tries talking to Finn about it. Of course, Finn has no idea when he’s going to die (most people don’t, so does that make Noah weird, or them?), so it’s not that helpful, but he makes Finn pinky promise that if someone kills him, Finn’ll kill the guy right back. Finn has him promise the same, but Noah really hopes he’s not around by the time he might have to follow through on that.

He gets shoved in the hallway of the middle school exactly once before he decides he’s not going to put up with this shit. Middle school sets the basis for high school, and high school is supposed to be the best years of your life. In Noah’s case, he’s _sure_ they’ll be the best, because they’ll also be pretty near the last, especially if he ends up getting one of those diseases that make him really sick and weak for months or _years_ before it finishes him off. Granddad had cancer for a long while before he died, and Noah figures the last couple of years aren’t going to count so much if he spends them in a hospital. So yeah, he’s making high school count.

The first thing to do is make sure he doesn’t get pushed around. Noah shaves off all his hair, and he only lets it grow back in one long stripe, and he tries out for the seventh and eighth grade football team, and when he makes it, he introduces himself as ‘Puck.’ He starts pushing back in the hallways, and then he keeps pushing, even when no one has started it. He figures he doesn’t need to study much; everyone says it’s important for his future, but he isn’t gonna have one.

 

Beth changes… well, everything, really. It’s something he never figured he’d get a chance at: being a father. Not that he thinks he’d be a very good one, not this young, but something still twists in his chest at the thought that even after he dies, someone new and beautiful will exist in the world because of _him_. He wants to scream when, for a couple of long and terrifying months, Finn takes credit for the miracle. Finn can just back the fuck off, Puck thinks, nasty thoughts running black through his head. His friend will have years after this to make something of his own, to start his own family. Puck only has this.

He gets it back, but it’s hard not to feel like shit about the way it happens.

As much as he insists to Quinn that they can do this, they can keep her and raise her and love each other, he doesn’t put up much of a fight against giving her away. Sure, he’d love to do this, he’d make it work, but he could only give four years, and then Beth would be old enough to miss him when he died. It’s enough knowing that she’s here because of him, that Shelby is grateful and happy and has a family because of him.

Puck’s got it all in perspective (he’s gonna die in four years, he should have the relative wisdom of like, a sixty-year-old, right?), but he still ends up finding a hallway he thinks is safely out of the way and crumbling against the wall for a while. Kurt Hummel finds him, but for once he doesn’t say anything and just sits down next to Puck for a while, and kindly doesn’t mention that Puck’s cheeks are very wet. Maybe this is something good too, Puck thinks, this Glee club thing. Maybe this is something else he can leave with the world. His friends (his _friends_ , God that’s weird because they’re dorks, the lot of them) will notice when he’s gone.

 

He freaks out a little, in junior year. Kurt’s dad almost dies, and even though he ends up being fine it sets off a spiral of thoughts in Puck’s head, none of which agree with each other. _I could be in a coma for the last four years of my life and get cheated out of everything_ , he thinks, and, _it’s less than four years now. Twenty is like a quarter of the normal life expectancy. Maybe I can fix it maybe I won’t die. Maybe I’ll get sick and fall asleep and I won’t even count down the last few days. Nothing matters nothing matters nothing matters. I can do anything for the next four years and_ nothing will matter _because I can’t die until I’m twenty_.

It’s that last thought that somehow, he won’t be able to say exactly why later, has him crashing his mother’s car into the side of a convenience store (and he was right, because he doesn’t die). It’s an even stupider jump of logic on the cops’ part that leads to him getting arrested for trying to steal at ATM. What the hell, even.

Juvie is a shitty, shitty place, and he leaves with a resolution to stick to the straight and narrow path. He doesn’t have a hell of a long time left, and he’s sure as fuck not going to spend it in jail.

 

He eats and sleeps and wastes precious hours of his life on stupid things like driving to school or sitting in history class or going to the bathroom. He laughs with his friends and plays the guitar and runs until he feels like his legs are going to fall off. He has sex. A lot. He even tries out the whole relationship thing, but that backfires in the end. Oh well.

He knocks several diseases off his mental list: Things That Could Kill Me. Some things would have shown symptoms by now, would have been diagnosed. Cancer’s still on the table, though, and the leading causes of death for twenty-year-olds tend to be things like car accidents and suicide, really sudden things that no one sees coming, usually.

He doesn’t apply to any colleges, but he makes plans to move to LA after high school. He figures he can do that, make plans, just for a couple of years.

He stands on a stage, and singing like this makes him feel like the world stops around him for the song, which he appreciates.

He generally tries not to be a total dick. Really.

He actually graduates high school, which, who knew? He’s a normal fucking kid.

 

Puck enjoys Los Angeles. Well enough, anyway. He’s set up his life here like a dying man (ha) sets up a hospital room: the cheery stuff is mostly a disguise for what he knows is coming, but it’s a comfortable enough place to spend a last couple of years. He doesn’t bother setting down deep roots, building a career or a relationship or anything that would take too long to see through. He poses for pictures in front of that famous theater because it’s fun, and what other job could he show up to every day dressed like a superhero? The only downside is that the costume can get really hot, and once in a while he wonders vaguely if he’ll die of heatstroke.

He sees a lot of movies, because he enjoys letting himself sink into another world for a while, especially the DC and Marvel movies that are coming out, like, all the time, now. The guys in those movies are always coming back from shit that should’ve kept them down for good, fighting unbeatable odds and bringing each other back from the literal dead. Superpowers probably help with stuff like that. He watches the Avengers ten times, the summer it comes out.

It was always part of the plan to keep up with every from New Directions, because he likes them and two years isn’t really long enough to justify falling completely out of contact, but at the same time it’s actually kind of a mistake when he calls Kurt. He means to call Finn, actually, who he’s heard has been staying at Kurt’s place, and who he’s been talking to a lot lately (like, way more than usual, because the army thing came way out of left field and Puck was starting to wonder whether he really might have to keep that promise to Finn, from way back when they were preteens and profoundly stupid). But Finn’s left already, so instead Puck talks to a very dull-voiced Kurt, who it turns out has just broken up with his cheating asshole of a boyfriend.

Puck doesn’t actually call him that out loud, not to Kurt, because he figures it’s a little early for that, but it only takes a second to make the switch in his head. He used to like Blaine just fine, but anyone who can make Kurt sound like _that_ deserves every bad name Puck can think of and more.

He calls Kurt again the next day, just to make sure the dude hasn’t accidentally overdosed on his sleeping pills or something equally dramatic.

Then he calls again, the day after that. To remind Kurt that he doesn’t deserve this shit, and then to ask him about his internship, because someone’s gotta take Kurt’s mind off it all.

He calls again, and… doesn’t really bother thinking of an excuse.

It’s a little more regularity than he’s been used to since high school. It’s also, technically, getting closer to someone, which Puck had resolved specifically not to do, but he thinks maybe it doesn’t have to count, because he already knew Kurt before this, they’re just talking more. They talk about life after high school, and who they’re keeping up with, and who they’re meeting now. They talk about movies and music that’s come out, and things they remember from Glee club, and Puck is glad Kurt can’t see his face when he admits he still remembers the Single Ladies dance. They talk about their jobs and the relative costs of living in their cities.

Sometime in January, Kurt mentions that maybe one roommate isn’t enough in New York, and Puck says well, maybe he should hop on a plane and move in too, add to the rent pool, and Kurt laughs and says that would be helpful. It takes them three more days to realize they aren’t joking.

 

If LA was a decorated hospital room, Puck thinks, looking around the loft fondly, then this is like moving back home, setting up in his own comfortable bed and a room that’s familiar but decked out in all the things he needs to carry him through. He’s got a job at a fucking _coffee shop_ , for God’s sake. Can’t get much more comfortable than that.

“Admiring the view?” Kurt teases, when he catches Puck staring out the window in deep thought (mostly about whether there are any graveyards around here or if you have to leave the city, because he’s become a morbid fucker in his old age).

“Huh?”

Kurt gestures out the window, through which they can see the wall of the building across from them, and the street below if they crane their necks. Puck grins at Kurt when he realizes the joke, and gives him a little shove in the side. “View costs extra.”

“This one costs enough,” Kurt grumbles. “It’s nice, having you here, to… Yeah.”

“Nice bein’ here,” Puck adds, aware that they never said exactly what for about two seconds before he’s aware that, holy shit, he’s _flirting_ with Kurt. _Badly_.

 

When he kisses Kurt, Puck’s thinking mostly of how soft his lips are, but there’s also a pretty strong voice in the back of his head shouting ‘Screw it’ over the protestations he’s been entertaining for weeks, now. And there, too, is something curling in his chest, over to where his hand tightens on Kurt’s, that saying what he tends to avoid saying at all costs: I wish I could stay. For this, I want to stay.

It’s not the first time he’s let himself admit that, had it drawn out of him like it’s being sucked out by a vacuum set on max (the first time was Beth, a tiny hand grabbing his finger), but it hurts like it.

He decides he’s going to let himself have this, anyway. It’s like that Make a Wish thing, only he doesn’t want a trip to Disneyworld or a backstage pass at a Taylor Swift concert. He wants this.

 

_This_ is something seriously awesome, apparently. If he hadn’t already made up his mind to go for it, the first month or so would have changed his mind anyway. Puck has someone to kiss every night, if he wants to, which he generally does, and he lives with Kurt and he’s known Kurt for years, so they skip past a lot of that boring get-to-know-you stuff and see each other all the time. Kurt is funny and attractive and puts up with Puck’s obsession with Marvel movies and his face lights up every time Puck has a coffee made to his specifications ready at the shop, and holy shit, he’s just a thousand times more awesome than Puck ever game him credit for in high school.

When he tells Kurt this, Kurt just smiles and says, of course he is, and then his eyes soften a little and he tells Puck that the same is true for him. Puck pushes himself deeper under the covers and into Kurt’s hold, and wonders how much longer they’ll bother keeping the extra bed they don’t use anymore. There isn’t a lot of space around here for shit they don’t need.

Their first big fight is kind of awful, but then it’s awesome because Kurt’s tripping over an apology and accidentally says the L-word, and Puck crushes Kurt into his chest to feel the warmth. _He loves me_ , Puck thinks giddily, and then he thinks that if Kurt loves him, comes back to him, maybe he’ll stick around even if Puck does end up dying slow in a hospital, which there’s still time for. He feels guilty and selfish a moment later, for that thought, and pulls Kurt is tighter. Kurt laughs something about breathing properly, in a nervous way that says he knows something more is happening. He doesn’t ask, and Puck doesn’t tell him, but he does eventually get his throat to work well enough to say ‘I love you’ back.

 

With Kurt and Rachel both in school and May dragging them heavy into finals season, they don’t quite manage to have the free time to celebrate Puck’s birthday on his actual birthday. Puck assures them it’s fine, and they go out for dinner (nowhere fancy, because they’re happy but they’re still poor as shit) three days after. Rachel asks him what it’s like to be nineteen and Kurt kisses him on the cheek when he says Happy Birthday, and Puck thinks, _one more year_. But it’s a whisper, because what’s happening around him right now is so much more important.

 

In the last year, he starts looking for symptoms, closely and carefully, even though he knows it’s more likely to be some freak accident. Still, he wants to know as far in advance as possible. He probably won’t go to the doctor, because that would just be a depressing exercise in futility, but he wants to keep track for himself.

Puck gets a cold around the end of November and freaks out just a little. Kurt laughs and calls him overdramatic while he tucks an extra blanket around Puck’s shoulders. Puck gets better, of course. None of the symptoms stick. As time goes by, cancer’s looking less and less likely, which is kind of a relief. He’s counting down months, now, and he wants to spend them outside.

His world is starting to narrow down. He can’t make so many plans anymore, just continue on the path he’s on. It’s a nice one, sure, but he starts to feel bad at turning down Kurt’s subtle hints that they could find their own place. Having an apartment to themselves is a nice thought, and they might (just barely) be able to afford it, but he’d be leaving Kurt on his own in half a year. Better to stay here, where Rachel is.

 

Two months out, Puck gets angry. _Pissed_ , really. He’s always kept a lid on it before, but seriously, what the _fuck_? He’d just like to know why, of all the shitty things to happen, he had this whispered countdown in the back of his head telling him _exactly when he’s going to die_. It doesn’t even make sense; it’s bullshit. No one else has to live with this (but then, maybe they do, because it’s not like _he’s_ ever told anyone). Fuck, maybe he’s crazy, maybe that day will just pass like normal. Except the countdown has fucking _seconds_ on it now, which is maybe a perspective and maybe a proximity thing, but he knows the minute he’s going to die, and he’s so beyond done with this shit.

He comes to the conclusion that he’s not crazy, that the countdown is legit, because he’s pretty sure that amount of alcohol should have killed him, if it wasn’t his destiny to die another day. He calls Kurt in the morning to let him know he’s alright, and Kurt clearly isn’t sure whether to be more worried or angry.

Puck tells him a story about his father calling, which is believable enough.

He calms down, eventually.

 

He turns twenty.

 

“Are you alright?” Kurt asks. He’s not whispering because Rachel isn’t around tonight, but he is kind of breathless. Puck would hope he was, after sex like that. Nothing like impending doom to kick things up a notch into the realm of truly athletic. “Hey,” Kurt says, putting a hand against Puck’s cheek. “Alright?”

“Yeah,” Puck gets out, relaxing just enough to drop down to the side, letting Kurt slide out of him as he goes, even though he feels unnaturally empty afterwards. “’M good.”

“Okay.” Kurt curls around him, so close that Puck wonders if he could actually block out the world. Maybe if they stayed in bed tomorrow, nothing would be able to get to them, and he could pass right through to the other side of this countdown (13 hours, 3 minutes, 14, 13, 12 seconds…).

Na, probably not. Puck kissed Kurt’s collarbone, says ‘Thanks’ so quietly that Kurt doesn’t even hear him, and they fall asleep like that. Puck dreams of Kurt in heavy armor, and he thinks he’s searching for something.

 

“Puck, this paper is due _tomorrow_ ,” Kurt whines, batting Puck’s hands away from the computer screen. “It’s the last of the semester, alright? Tomorrow, I will go for a walk with you. _Tomorrow_.”

“C’mon, Kurt,” Puck wheedles carefully. Carefully, because he’s a little afraid of pushing it, and as much as he wants to be outside right now, it is _not_ worth the chance of getting into a fight with an hour left on the clock. If he ends up waiting it out right here on the couch next to Kurt, that’s cool too, but he’d rather be out in the city. He’s called his family, called Finn, called work to tell them he won’t be in today. He wants to take a walk. “You’re practically done with it, and a walk will clear your head, y’know? Help you think straight so you can finish it right.”

It won’t actually. Puck’s pretty sure this walk will fuck Kurt up a whole lot, and maybe he should just let Kurt finish the damn paper, but he’s feeling selfish today. Dying people get a pass on that, right?

Kurt sighs heavily, and relents, because it _is_ a really beautiful day out, he tells Puck, and not because Puck was particularly convincing.

They get coffee, because Kurt’s been living on that stuff lately, and pastries with really bright frosting, because Puck wants something with a fuckton of sugar. They’re not close enough to Central Park to take the walk that way, and Puck’s a little afraid that if he gets on the subway he’ll doom the train to some really tragic crash or something, so they just stroll around their neighborhood instead. They stop by the record store that Kurt found about 0.2 seconds after moving here, and Puck cuts the visit a little short (nine minutes).

They’re just wandering around the streets, with six minutes left to go, and Puck still ignoring that voice in his head that says it’s a bitch move to die in the middle of the general public (people are going to scream or something). But it’s bright out and Kurt’s cheeks are pink in the sun, and Puck’s smiling like an idiot anyway because he looks really good like this. It’s only because Puck is staring so closely at Kurt, memorizing him for the nonexistent future, that he sees the taxi.

Drivers in New York are so, so shitty.

This one’s going way too fast, and for a second all Puck can think about is how confused he is, because it doesn’t even look like he’s in the way. This guy’s gonna miss him.

Not Kurt.

Kurt probably scrapes his hands to shit when Puck shoves him out of the way, but it’s better than the alternative.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, this hurts.

_Unintentional injury_ , Puck thinks. _Leading cause of death for ages 20 to 24._

At least if he was in a hospital he would’ve had morphine. Wow, _fuck_.

Kurt’s hand is in his and his face is hovering in the air, looking seriously upset about something.

Oh, right.

It’s cool, actually. Puck’s cool with this. He listens to the countdown in his head tick away (five minutes and thirty-seven seconds, thirty-six, thirty-five…) with a sense of detachment. He doesn’t need it to tell him he’s dying, now. The pain in his chest does that, anyway.

But it’s cool. Kurt’s okay, so Puck’s okay. Hey, check it out, he did something awesome with this. That’s more than he’d figured he was getting.

Kurt’s still upset though. Puck thinks it’s because he hasn’t had time to come to terms, yet. He smiles at Kurt, tries to say something comforting, but he’s mostly thinking that this is a really pretty sight to go out on and his mouth is working weird so he doesn’t think the right stuff comes out (five minutes and two seconds).

A cloud covers the sun, only maybe not, because it keeps getting darker and darker and that can’t just be clouds.

Puck figures the last five minutes weren’t all that important anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

He can let that go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Huh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Check it out, he’s in a hospital, after all.

 

 

Nope, false alarm, he’s definitely dead.

 

Wait, no, hospital.

Wait.

He opens his eyes.

“You asshole,” Kurt says.

There’s nothing in the back of Puck’s head. No numbers, no countdown, and he doesn’t understand. “I died,” he tries, experimentally. What the hell kind of afterlife is this?

“Only for three minutes,” Kurt says, and when he shifts a little Puck realizes that the reason his hand hurts so much is because Kurt’s holding it so tightly. “You— _Shit_ , Puck, you…” He laughs, and it sounds awful; Puck knows that laugh and it usually means something in the world is breaking a little.

“Sorry,” he says, before he passes out again.

 

The next time he wakes up, people have had time to get there. Rachel, back from getting coffee, and his Ma and sister, out from Lima. Finn calls to say he’ll visit this weekend, and good job on not dying, dude. His mother cries more than he’s comfortable with. They talk a lot, all of them, but honestly, Puck has a hard time hearing them over the deafening silence in the back of his head.

Is this was it meant, all along? Or did he do it wrong, and something’s going to come along and finish the job any minute now?

His injuries aren’t that bad, he’s told. A bunch of ribs cracked and one of them punched in to fuck with his lung, and that’s why he died for a little bit there, but other than that, a broken arm, and a shitton of bruising, he’s okay. The doctor tells him he’s incredibly lucky. _Am I?_ Puck thinks, and leaves it to Kurt to absorb all the information about what he’ll need to go home.

 

He still hasn’t figured it out a week later, despite the fact that the week has dragged on slower than any he’s ever had, because it’s seven days he wasn’t supposed to have. It’s like _The Ring_ , but in reverse. Seven days since he should have died. Did die. Not permanently.

Puck’s head hurts. Kurt is surprisingly understanding about Puck’s choice of movie that night, though his hand tightens painfully on Puck’s broken arm when the girl crawls out of the television.

 

They have conversations about meaningless things, and things that actually do mean something, like when Puck is going back to work. Puck realizes he will be going back to work, this month and next month and for, damn, the next forty-ish years of his life? Who knows. He doesn’t know how long he has, now. It should be amazing, but he’s still working past the part where it’s terrifying.

 

It’s another week before they talk about it. Puck’s going back to work tomorrow, still tenderly nursing broken ribs, and since Kurt is off school and way over-protective lately, it’ll be the first place he’s actually gone by himself, since he died. Kurt is more nervous than he is, and he’s still working through the fact that he needs to make plans, now. They argue, make up, can’t have really exciting sex because his chest is so sore (damnit).

“Promise me you won’t do that again,” Kurt says, pressed against him on the couch.

“What? Run into cars?”

“ _No_. Well, yes, but anything like that at all. Get hurt and nearly die. Don’t do that, okay? I need you.”

Puck opens his mouth to say he won’t, to predict the future with as much certainty as he’s always felt, then stops. “I can’t promise,” he says instead, giddy with the realization and probably smiling inappropriately. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”

It’s fantastic. It really is. He used to think, sometimes, that it didn’t matter what he did, because fate and destiny and all that crap, that it meant freedom until that day. He was wrong. With all this time, who knows how much time before him, _now_ he can do anything he wants.

He still wants _this_.

He speaks up again because Kurt, not realizing what a miracle this is (maybe Puck will tell him someday, maybe), looks very upset by this answer. “But I’ll try. I really will, okay?”

Kurt’s arms are too tight around his chest, and his ribs hurt, because people are so fucking fragile sometimes and his body doesn’t get that it’s a hug from his boyfriend and it shouldn’t be hurting him. But what the hell, he’s pretty sure he’s going to be walking around on this planet tomorrow, so.

He’s trying. This is going to be different.


End file.
